Musonius Rufus, Introduction

We often speak of the “Big Three” in Roman Stoic philosophy: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Their writings are what most people interested in Stoicism will first come across, and there is certainly enough wisdom in their words to last someone for many lifetimes.

There came a point where I realized I had somehow managed to read all of their writings, at least once, and in many cases far more than once, and I still felt I had barely scratched the surface.

Still, it is always refreshing to find a new and different perspective. We sadly only have fragments of the earlier Greek Stoics, and there were many other writings from the later Roman period that are now lost to us. Time has a way of doing that.

Yet we sometimes overlook another surviving Roman source, Gaius Musonius Rufus, the “Roman Socrates”, a gadfly to Nero, and a teacher of Epictetus.

A few of his lectures survive, written down by his students, as well as a handful of fragments preserved by later authors, but what we lack in quantity here is more than made up for in quality. I am always happy to share his writings with people who have never heard of him, precisely because I still vividly remember the sense of comfort I felt when I first discovered what he had to say.

I’m not exactly sure why, but Musonius Rufus has found a very special place in my heart over the years. It is perhaps just because his thinking and style speak to my particular temperament. His reasoning is profound, but always eminently practical. There is rigor and discipline in him, and a razor wit, combined with a warm decency and kindness. With apologies to Captain Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I can only say that “of all the Stoic writings I have encountered in my travels, his were the most human.”

He touches on a range of topics here, from good habits of thinking to good habits of eating, from bearing suffering to forming an education, from marriage and family to growing old. There is even an essay here about how to cut one’s hair. Whatever he writes about is informed by a commitment to philosophy as a concrete way of living well, not just as a fancy display of abstractions.

The translation of the Lectures and Fragments used here is from Cora E. Lutz, now in the public domain. As has become my habit over many years, I added my own informal and personal reflections to these passages, not to improve them or reveal any deeper insight on them, but simply to help me understand their meaning for myself. I offer no scholarly wisdom here, only how Musonius Rufus affected my own thoughts and feelings.

My purpose in finally sharing them is never to tell you what to think; I hope rather to encourage you to think the original writings through for yourself, in your own way. In this manner, each of us can make philosophy distinctly his own.